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Apple knocks it out of the park — will be first trillion dollar company

Apple crushed it today.

Bottom Line: Apple will be the first company to hit a trillion dollar market cap.

Six Point Recap

[ Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/m06k_ ]

1. Apple Pay will add $100B in market cap-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Tap your phone or watch to a base station and pay with one click. You sign with your fingerprint reader. There are no credit card numbers stored into the phone so the person at the counter can’t steal them.People were doing this five years ago in Tokyo and Seoul when I was rolling with Masa Son and the Naver crew. Why the frack did this take so long to make here? Doesn’t matter. Apple gets credit for taking something ordinary in Asia and making it “extraordinary” in the U.S.Losers: Google Wallet, PayPal (toast if they don’t get a p... more »

Apple knocks it out of the park — will be first trillion dollar company

Apple crushed it today.

Bottom Line: Apple will be the first company to hit a trillion dollar market cap.

Six Point Recap

[ Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/m06k_ ]

1. Apple Pay will add $100B in market cap-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Tap your phone or watch to a base station and pay with one click. You sign with your fingerprint reader. There are no credit card numbers stored into the phone so the person at the counter can’t steal them.People were doing this five years ago in Tokyo and Seoul when I was rolling with Masa Son and the Naver crew. Why the frack did this take so long to make here? Doesn’t matter. Apple gets credit for taking something ordinary in Asia and making it “extraordinary” in the U.S.Losers: Google Wallet, PayPal (toast if they don’t get a p... more »

Apple knocks it out of the park — will be first trillion dollar company

Apple crushed it today.

Bottom Line: Apple will be the first company to hit a trillion dollar market cap.

Six Point Recap

[ Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/m06k_ ]

1. Apple Pay will add $100B in market cap-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Tap your phone or watch to a base station and pay with one click. You sign with your fingerprint reader. There are no credit card numbers stored into the phone so the person at the counter can’t steal them.People were doing this five years ago in Tokyo and Seoul when I was rolling with Masa Son and the Naver crew. Why the frack did this take so long to make here? Doesn’t matter. Apple gets credit for taking something ordinary in Asia and making it “extraordinary” in the U.S.Losers: Google Wallet, PayPal (toast if they don’t get a product CEO — FAST!), Square (seriously at risk).Winners:@jack at SQUARE, as Google and PayPal need to buy it NOW. Bidding war, goes for $4B.

2. Apple Watch will add $100B in market cap-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-The Apple Watch will cost $75, maybe $100, to build. It’s got a $349 price tag — to start. Apple will make at least $250 for the base model. 20% of iPhone users will buy it in year one. 25–50M sold in year one, easily. $10B in cash money. Profit. Bank it, baby.Oh yeah, they got one made of gold and you know they will launch partnerships with brands like Gucci, Prada & Jay Z. Those will be blinged out in diamonds and precious metals and have $1k-5k in profit. They’ll sell a couple of million of those per year as well. And you’ll be able to replace the chips on the inside (a first for Apple), so you can feel fine about your 50-year investment in a watch that you’ll give your kids.[ “and now I give this watch to you…”]

3. iPhone 6 Plus catches Apple up-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-We’ve all been dogging Apple for not getting this product out two years ago, when Samsung started taking high end users from their ecosystem with the Note. That absurdly sized phone, or phablet, is LOVED by geeks who gave up their iPhone for it.They love to torture Apple users with it and now they’ll all come back to the iOS ecosystem with their tails between their legs — and the rest of us can’t wait to bust their chops!Samsung’s biggest advantage over Apple was the larger screens and that just went “poof!”Apple was religious about sizes because a) Steve Jobs and b) they didn’t want to torture iOS app developers with adapting their apps for multiple sizes.Steve would have changed his position on sizes, and convinced us all that he supported the idea early on. Man, do I miss Steve. I mean, not personally — we weren’t taking long walks around Palo Alto like Walt did — but professionally.He’s smiling right now knowing that he built a kick-ass team that is “doing it their way,” not his way. They’re crushing it on their terms with swagger. Not worrying that someone leapfrogged them, but rather that they hit their internal standard.Apple is not over.Apple is as strong as ever. Today proves it.4. U2’s free album is Beats By Dre teaser — more to come-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Tim Cook is our charming uncle who we can’t wait to spend time with, and Bono fawned over him as such. Tim was so proud of U2 and excited to help them get their album to the rest of the world and capture the record for the largest distributed album of all time.How?I’m guessing Apple paid $10–30M to get the exclusive rights to give every iTunes user a copy of U2’s new album. I mean, U2 sold 1.1M copies of their album “No Line on the Horizon” from 2009, so at $8 net (not retail) price that’s $8.8M.Why not reach 727x your audience and get one check from Apple?Oh wait, that’s a new f-ing business model. Apple could simply buy the exclusive rights to the top five albums every month for $20M each. That’s $1.2B a year for 60 albums — or the cost of selling 4.8M watches with a $250 profit margin.So, why not do that? That’s probably what the Beats by Dre model is all about: Apple as a label. Just buy the albums and promote the fuck out of them. Everyone wins: free music for us, another selling point for Apple & artists get absurd exposure through sampling.Ticket sales will certainly pop, as folks don’t want to go to the concert without knowing the lyrics right?Apple saved the album today!5. Startups Killed: Pebble, FitBit, Voxer & …-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Pebble and Fitbit I love you. I love all founders who innovate and create amazing products, but when Apple comes into your market like they did today, well, even Nike gets out of the way![ Nike shut down their health band last April ]Apple or Google/Nest should buy both companies now. Get those teams and step up the fight with Apple.6. Dave Morin of Path.com in front row? Sold!-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Dave Morin was chilling in the first row of the event two seats from Johnny Ive and — I think — next to Dr Dre. That means one thing and one thing only: Path and the team are going to Apple. You don’t get that first row seat by accident. Path would jump from an exclusive club to jumpstart Apple’s non-existing social presence, which has been well-documented from Color to Ping.Apple’s new iMessage, which does what Voxer, Snapchat and others do, is super clever, so why not leverage Path as a better name and interface? Or at the very least a second platform.No reason that every Apple user couldn’t automatically have a Path account and opt out in the iCloud settings. This would be a master stroke by Tim Cook, who desperately needs a social mind in his brain trust. Dave Morin, Cue, Cook, Dre, Iovine, Schiller and Ive? Boom!Alright, that’s all I got.Big day for Apple.Google & Samsung, what’s up? What you got?!best @jasonPS — The LAUNCH Scale event is coming up [http://events.launch.co/scale] and we are giving 10% of the tickets to women and minorities so we can help change the ratio in the industry. My team is awesome that way. Apply here for a scholarship: [http://events.launch.co/scalescholarship]PPS — LAUNCH Festival is March 2–4 in San Francisco: [http://festival.launch.co]PPPS — This Week in Startups is blazing like a bonfire! Subscribe in iTunes here [http://bit.ly/TwiStA] for Audio and here [http://bit.ly/TwiStV] for Video. And follow us for updates and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks on Twitter & Instagram:@twistartupsPPPPS — Download the [ Inside.com ] app to get the best curated journalism in real time. https://appsto.re/us/WwA3Q.i﻿___

had a conversation over email with a journalist about @ycombinator-- certainly they will only use 2%... here is the full Q&A, unedited.

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Thanks for getting back to me. Here are my questions. Feel free to call with replies. XXX-XXX-XXXX

1) Would you agree that Y Combinator's influence in Silicon Valley has grown?

Of course, that's obvious. You don't invest in Reddit, Dropbox, Heroku & Airbnb and not have amazing influence. Those are four of the most important companies of the last decade.

Also, Sam taking over is a master stroke by PG. Sam is loved, smart and ambitious, so I expect to see Ycombinator New York City, YCViacomm and YCombinator verticals like YCHealthcare in the next year (basically the model TechStars pioneered for the past couple of years with Disney, Nike and Rackspace).

had a conversation over email with a journalist about @ycombinator-- certainly they will only use 2%... here is the full Q&A, unedited.

-----

Thanks for getting back to me. Here are my questions. Feel free to call with replies. XXX-XXX-XXXX

1) Would you agree that Y Combinator's influence in Silicon Valley has grown?

Of course, that's obvious. You don't invest in Reddit, Dropbox, Heroku & Airbnb and not have amazing influence. Those are four of the most important companies of the last decade.

Also, Sam taking over is a master stroke by PG. Sam is loved, smart and ambitious, so I expect to see Ycombinator New York City, YCViacomm and YCombinator verticals like YCHealthcare in the next year (basically the model TechStars pioneered for the past couple of years with Disney, Nike and Rackspace).

2) If so, what effects is that having?

I wouldn't say it's having some huge impact, because it's an institution right now. If they pump out 200 startups a year they will have a unicorn every other year, which means they'll wind up building a huge portfolio.

If they launch 10 YCs in 10 markets? That would be a huge, disruptive impact.

3) In your tweet you said YC companies' early stage valuations are too high. Some investors would argue that early stage investing is mostly binary--there are home runs and there are strikes and little in between. Why have you passed on highly valued YC companies?

If you're new to angel investing and have low deal flow then I don't think there is any harm in paying 2-15x the premium that YC startups have.

However, I see almost all the deals in the market so it simply doesn't make sense to deploy $250k to own 2.5% of a YC company when I can deploy that same $250k and own 2.5% of two or three startups that are further along than the YC startups.

So, the binary rule is correct for most angel investors who don't have great access. At YC you know you are not getting a lemon so paying 3x on average (pulling that number from the air) makes total sense as an insurance policy.

However, if I can get 1/3rd the valuation i can make 3x the bets and increase my odds. The valuations I see from YC startups right now is 7-12m compared to 3-8m for Apples-to-Apples.

4) Do you think the type of companies that YC is funding is going to significantly change the types of companies that VCs invest in? Is it impacting the types of companies other accelerators/incubators back?

No.

5) Are there any forces to counterbalance the rise of YC?

There is no need to counterbalance YC. It's doing a great job of taking a company from A to B, but I do think the issue is that folks are looking at YC as specifically a way to triple their valuation. So, as one founder told me they gave the 6% to YC for ~$100k ($2m valuation) specifically because they knew they could get an 8-10m valuation 12 weeks later.

that to me is a dangerous signal for YC that Sam should fight against: you shouldn't join YC to increase your valuation, you should join YC to learn from some of the smartest startup minds in the world--which they have.

Really enjoyed having +Michael Jones and +Peter Pham on +This Week In Startups this week. Two really smart executives building really meaningful startups...... they were super honest about their experiences, what they're trying to do and where they're going. ﻿

Really enjoyed having +Michael Jones and +Peter Pham on +This Week In Startups this week. Two really smart executives building really meaningful startups...... they were super honest about their experiences, what they're trying to do and where they're going. ﻿___

there really is no place for strippers--robot or otherwise--at a tech conference. It's just sexists and lame.... in a scifi movie? in an art show? sure! sex/sexism/pushing the envelope--fine! in a business setting? it's not cool. https://www.inside.com/tech/u2i89/cebit-expo-causes-stir-with-poledancing-robots ﻿

there really is no place for strippers--robot or otherwise--at a tech conference. It's just sexists and lame.... in a scifi movie? in an art show? sure! sex/sexism/pushing the envelope--fine! in a business setting? it's not cool. https://www.inside.com/tech/u2i89/cebit-expo-causes-stir-with-poledancing-robots ﻿___